'Twisted' lives up to title with unbelievable plot

The coincidences are so unrealistic they're laughable.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
"Twisted" is right. Ashley Judd's latest "woman-in-jeopardy" thriller piles on so many ridiculously convoluted plot contortions that it nearly resembles a bag of stale pretzels. Too bad somebody forgot to bring along the beer. You'll need at least a six-pack to make it through this doozy.
What makes "Twisted" more depressing than your usual terrible movie is that it was directed by the great Philip Kaufman, whose credits span such all-time keepers as "The Wanderers," "The Right Stuff" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." (Cue the "Unbearable" and "Wrong Stuff" jokes.)
The opening scene isn't without promise. Undercover San Francisco cop Jessica Shepard (Judd who, like Kaufman, should have passed on this tour of duty) is violently tussling in an alley with a sicko who's got a knife lodged at her pretty throat. Shepard somehow manages to free herself from this sticky situation, handcuffs the perp and, just for emphasis, gives him a swift kick in the nether regions.
Her latest collar lands Shepard a visit to the department shrink (David Strathairn) and a promotion to the department's homicide squad. Helping to expedite matters is police commissioner John Mills (Samuel L. Jackson), the ex-partner of Shepard's dad. (Mills raised Shepard after her old man went postal and killed himself and Shepard's adulterous mom.)
Fatal flaw
In a gap of logic so credibility-defying that it effectively sabotages the rest of the film, Shepard gets assigned to her new division's hottest murder case even before she has time to settle into the job.
A seemingly random series of men have been turning up dead throughout the city.
Their only possible link? All the victims enjoyed Shepard's, uh, carnal pleasures on at least one occasion. Even though Shepard willingly volunteers that tidbit of information to her lieutenant (Russell Wong), Mills' string-pulling keeps her on the case. Yeah, sure.
We soon learn that Shepard shares her late pop's anger management issues. She drinks herself into oblivion, blacks out, then wakes up the next morning with no recollection of the previous night. Hmmm; sounds pretty suspicious to me. Realizing that she might very well be the killer, Shepard ... oh, why bother?
By the time the ex-district attorney (another former flame) turns up dead in his hot tub, you'd figure that it was time for Shepard to be locked up or at the very least reassigned. Shepard's hunky new partner (a slumming Andy Garcia) keeps hitting on her, but she sensibly resists his amorous advances.
Garcia's character, of course, exists solely to provide an additional red herring, but in a movie that's nothing but red herrings, it's kind of hard to distinguish a herring from a sturgeon from a carp.
Ludicrous climax
At no point in the story will you be able to guess where this train wreck is headed. (That can be a good thing under normal circumstances.) What's bad -- unforgivable even -- is that we never care. The overheated climax is so ludicrously unhinged and laugh-out-loud funny that it will make anyone who complained about the ending of "In the Cut" feel deeply ashamed. Donald's idiotic serial-killer script in "Adaptation" sounded more plausible.
Kaufman gives the film a very dated, 1980s feel. Like "Fatal Attraction," "Twisted" equates promiscuous sex with death, and thinks it's being bold by suggesting that women can be every bit as lethal as men. In our post-"Kill Bill" and "Monster" world, that notion seems downright quaint.
The performances, alas, sink to the level of Sarah Thorp's wretched screenplay, with only Mark Pellegrino from "Mulholland Drive" making a favorable impression as one of Shepard's unlucky ex-lovers.
One thing you can say for Kaufman is that he never repeats himself. Hopefully he'll never make a movie this junky or disposable again.
XWrite Milan Paurich at milanpaurich@aol.com.